I've hung my overcoat at the crossroads of media technology and social change for the last 20 years as a journalist, author, and consultant. That includes a book - CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World (Wiley) which chronicles the rise of online social activism - and bylines at The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, techPresident.com, Social Edge, Industry Standard, Inside, Worth and Contribute magazines, among many other publications. I co-founded three companies, including the pioneering '90s protoblog @NY and CauseWired, my consulting firm currently advising clients on the social commons. In my spare time, I'm an adjunct instructor of social media and philanthropy at New York University.

The New Networked Feminism: Limbaugh's Spectacular Social Media Defeat

The world of networked hurt that descended on the spiteful media enterprise that is Rush Limbaugh revealed a tenacious, super-wired coalition of active feminists prepared at a moment’s notice to blow the lid off sexist attacks or regressive health policy. When Limbaugh called Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” in response to her testimony before Congress on contraception costs, he may well have been surprised by the strength of the response. But he shouldn’t have been.

At latest count, nine advertisers have pulled the plug on Limbaugh. [Update: 12 advertisers and two radio stations.] Each was effectively targeted on Facebook and Twitter by an angry and vocal storm of thousands of people calling for direct action. The campaign was almost instantaneous, coordinated by no individual or organization, and entirely free of cost. Prominent feminist organizers told Forbes that it was social media’s terrible swift sword, led once again by Twitter and Facebook-savvy women, that dealt Limbaugh the worst humiliation of his controversial career, and in many ways, revealed the most potent “non-organized” organization to take the field on the social commons in the age of Occupy Wall Street and Anonymous.

“Given that much of the increased vocabulary and awareness about gender in the national discussion comes through social media and from young people, I think that instances like this one should give those who claim that young people don’t care about feminism pause!” says Rebecca Traister, a contributor to Salon and author the important feminist history of the 2008 Presidential race, Big Girls Don’t Cry. “Young people are the ones who know how to use social media in this way, and look at the kind of impact it’s having.”

“What’s most interesting to me is that in the last two years or so specifically, women have been leading the charge online to campaign for themselves against this kind of abuse, largely thanks to advances in social networking,” said media technologist Deanna Zandt, author of Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking. ”In the past, we’d have to wait for some organization to take up the cause– create a petition, launch an email campaign — and outside of traditional feminist movement types, those campaigns rarely reached widespread acceptance.”

“Women aren’t waiting to be told what to do or which petition to sign, they’re just doing what we do best: talking and connecting,” agreed Allison Fine, senior fellow for progressive think tank Demos.

It’s the next chapter in many ways to the story that hit the public consciousness with the strong, active online reaction to the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood a month ago. The response was quick, massive, and targeted. My own social graph (on both Facebook and Twitter) lit up like a summer fireworks display after sundown – stirring conversation, concentration around hashtags and shared media, and truly crowdsourced action.

“What we’re seeing right now is a continuation of the networked response to the right-wing war on women’s health that began with the Komen reaction a few weeks ago,” said Fine. “It is across generations and extra-organizational with individual women using a variety of social media channels to connect with other women and create their own protests.”

Yet it would also be a mistake to view the semi-organized reaction to Limbaugh as purely another battle between left and right on the American political spectrum. While Limbaugh’s sexist words have to been seen in the light of a Republican Presidential race that has, inexplicably, placed an opposition to contraception and women’s health at the center of its increasingly nasty public debate, the roots of El Rushbo’s humiliation also run deeper than spectrum ideology and political parties.

You can see those roots, for instance, in the brilliantly-organized campaign in late 2010 against two prominent liberal voices: filmmaker Michael Moore and talk show host Keith Olbermann. Feminist blogger Sady Doyle took Moore to task for posting bail on behalf of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after rape accusations brought by two women in Sweden confined him to custody in England, and her supporters battled both Moore and Olbermann for being dismissive of those accusations and implying they were a set-up to derail Assange’s exposure of U.S. government secrets.

Wrote Doyle in December, 2010 in a post that ignited a firestorm: “We are the progressive community. We are the left wing. We are women and men, we are from every sector of this community, and we believe that every rape accusation must be taken seriously, regardless of the accused rapist’s connections, power, influence, status, fame, or politics.”

Thousands of activists then used the #mooreandme tag on Twitter to (successfully) demand apologies from Moore and Olbermann. That campaign disproves the assertion by Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers in the Daily Beast that “the real fury seems reserved only for conservatives, while the men on the left get a wink and a nod as long as they are carrying water for the liberal cause.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Oh, please. I was raised in an all-woman household, and Rush called this exactly as I see it. Fluke went on national television and bragged that she and her friends have so many sex partners that I don’t know how she gets any homework done. Is that what you teach your daughters? Really? Is that how you want your sisters to behave? Do you think for a moment that this woman’s behavior is anything but lewd? By the way, she is a 30-year-old activist that has also campaigned to force employers to pay for sex-change operations. She’s not a shy, innocent little wall-flower like you seem to think.

That’s not taking away from women at all. In fact, that the focus has largely been on the effect on and response of women kind of takes away from men who share your concern and outrage. As others have commented, these issues absolutely do not affect just women- it’s in men’s interest to have healthy women and family planning too! Not to mention that I’d be very outraged, if I were a man, if someone said such vile things about all the women in my life. Anyway, it’s great to see men’s responses to these issues, and men should keep talking.

But wouldn’t it be great if instead of “Feminist” Rights we could ALL feel comfortable saying… “Human Rights?” Is there ANY human that should be insulted, marginalized and attacked because it makes money for some product, advertiser, media outlet or bigoted ideologue?

That is an enormously important point, Mr. Watson. Men often are the best allies women have. For a feminist voter, it is not enough to use a candidate’s sex to qualify them, it is important to examine where they stand on the issues. In any give male/female political race, the man may be the more feminist friendly candidate. I do think that was part of the problem with the McCaine/Palin ticket, women felt Palin’s was put on the ticket as a bid to capture the female vote, but they clearly identified her ideas as less feminist friendly than those of the Obama/Biden team.

I’m sorry, you’re probably very well meaning. But that sort of universalizing doesn’t strengthen movements, it furthers marginalization by ignoring existing systems of oppression. Women are systematically oppressed in a way that is different from how, say, black men are oppressed (black women experience a unique intersection of these.)

We’re not done yet. This effort will not be a success until Rush is exiled to blogtalkradio and his brand is permanently damaged. The last couple of months have been the tipping point for many feminists. We are energized and active. But it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole. There are so many new initiatives and crazy ideas to deprive women of their autonomy. And while the timing is suspicious, the increased negative attention on women’s rights got its start in 2008 during that horrific campaign. The sexism and unchecked misogyny was astonishing. It’s too bad that we didn’t react this way back then.